Those unfamiliar with or opposed to descriptive details such as “crystalline chill of stillness”, “trails of harmonic distortion”, “unearthly models and deranged vocal pirouettes” and likening music to “stepping inside a grotto with glistening stalactites” might approach Still In a Dream: Shoegaze, Slackers and the Reinvention of Rock, 1984-1994 by Simon Reynolds (White Rabbit, £23) with caution. A highly respected UK music writer who has been covering what he terms “a series of tumultuous sonic developments as they unfolded”, Reynolds, now in his early 60s, documents his time as a writer for the music newspaper Melody Maker, and in particular his love of the music of My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Pixies, Throwing Muses, Spaceman 3, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and Hüsker Dü. Admitting the book is “my redreaming of those dreamy days”, he offers, inevitably, more celebration than exploration, but for all of that, the book delivers what any decent book about music should: inspiration to revisit your record collection. Sometimes, it is those farthest from the flame that provide the most detailed information. Zelig-like, these people drift behind the scenes, popping up in photographs standing beside far more famous people. One such person is New Yorker Brian Cullman, whose memoir How To Prepare for the Past: Travels in Music and Time (Ze Books, £14.99) traces his life from an aspiring musician to a music writer who was working at a time when being embedded in music scenes with certain musicians was an accepted norm rather than what it is today (mostly non-existent). He mixed with the likes of Sandy Denny, George Martin, Nick Drake, John Martyn, Frank Zappa, Miles Davis and Van Morrison, and to what extent Cullman is actually involved with these people matters little. What is more important is how, through a sequence of concise vignettes, he encapsulates what it was like to exist as a companionable associate with no obvious agenda. Similar sketches appear throughout Mr Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of The Beatles by Philip Norman (Simon & Schuster, £30), but they read more like gossip than a measured story of a talented, if problematic and visionary, music manager. Norman is the author of Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation (1981), which aficionados consider a definitive biography; he is also the author of books about Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison. In other words, he is perfectly placed to dig into the life of the manager who, from 1961, nurtured four Liverpool lads and drilled into them the commercial benefits of swapping leather attire for smart matching suits. Leaning perhaps too heavily on Epstein’s Jewish background and his homosexuality, the book raises curious points about his micromanagement style (in 1964, before the group’s pivotal appearance on America’s Ed Sullivan Show, he said to the host: “I would like to know the exact wording of your introduction”) and the depth of his business acumen (a major gaffe was failing to understand the potential of band merchandise in the US). Fresh interviews shed little light (most of the people who were there are no longer with us) on a life that was, by societal standards, necessarily compartmentalised. I’m Not With the Man: A Writer’s Life with the Music Mavericks by Sylvia Patterson (Little Brown, £25) suffers from no such shortcomings. In her early 20s, she moved from Scotland to London to work at Smash Hits magazine, and from there to become one of the most prominent woman music journalists of her generation. This is her third book of memoir-adjacent writing, a collection of revisited interviews with rock and pop stars she views as (per the book title) “the ones whose lives crackled with chaotic energy, often on the verge of falling apart ... who embraced bedlam and rejected control ...” Cue a withering introduction that throws shade at Dermot Kennedy’s level-headedness and Taylor Swift’s profit-led business nous. What follows is a show of strength against the “committee-bolstered pop star” and, by placing each one in context and providing updates, immensely rewarding interviews with Marianne Faithfull, John Cooper Clarke, Chrissie Hynde, Liam Gallagher, Sinéad O’Connor, Thom Yorke, Lady Gaga, Johnny Marr, Björk and more. Patterson concludes that “the spirit of the weirdo, in the creative arts or otherwise, remains immortal”, despite, she writes sardonically, contemporary culture in all of its everything-everywhere-all-at-once digital ubiquity shoving her on to “the old folks’ pop bus on the coastline, clutching my bus pass”. Patterson would, no doubt, empathise with many of the women mentioned in Rebel Grrrls: The Real Story of Women and Punk by Molly Tie (Omnibus, £20), without actually being aware of them. That’s because Tie interviews women whose lives were changed by punk rock and not those who wrote the songs (for that focus, Vivien Goldman’s 2019 book Revenge of the She-Punks is essential). Going to the source explores answers to questions that men can’t answer: What is it like being a woman at a punk gig? What bands and songs represent the real lived experience of being female in a male-dominated environment? Starting in 1974-76 (namechecking the likes of Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, Poly Styrene and Siouxsie Sioux) and culminating in the 2020s (with a telling reference to Northern Irish band Problem Patterns’ 2023 debut album Blouse Club and to the success of US teenage punk band The Linda Lindas), the book underlines that punk is about responding to and challenging the status quo. As one of the interviewees, Daisy Richards, points out: “What’s more feminist than that?”[ Laurie Anderson on Lou Reed: ‘He said, I’ll get on a plane right now. We got married the next day’Opens in new window ]Sneaking in through a side door for last orders is Pub Rock by Mark Wilkerson (Bloomsbury Academic, £13.49). Although it is a slim book (140 pages), Wilkerson packs in details with authoritative touches, documenting the beginnings of the short-lived, early-1970s London-based music scene, and how it replaced the intricate stylings of prog rock with a more musically brusque approach. The influence and involvement of Irish musicians and movers is noted (including Dave Robinson, the future boss of Stiff Records, and Deke O’Brien, of Bees Make Honey, one of pub rock’s pioneering groups), but of perhaps more importance to the reader is how a range of misfits laid the groundwork for the undiluted energy of punk. Which is, of course, another story altogether.